95% of the problem with Mir, was that GN/DB who ran it were one of the first to start a practice that has become a cancer on the entire market. They jumped on the MMO bandwagon early, with no idea how to treat people and run the game, and they expected people to fork out every month for NO customer support, unstable servers, and an update once every millenium (which resulted in even worse servers). I remember the game sometimes went down from friday evening to monday morning, and sometimes they wouldn't even apologise.
The only people left that play the game seriously now, are the people who devoted their lives to it, and have no idea of how to function in the real world, or people who are too scared to move to a new game leaving behind their DSS or equivelent that makes up for the fact their genitals have shrivelled up after 6 years of killing the same bugs in the same cave 16 hours a day.